As is our custom, the choir had a well-deserved Sunday off, though plenty of us were present in this morning’s full congregation. Musical selections were in the hands of The Management; by the look of things, as well as music suitable for today’s solemnity, some of the choices were made by a couple celebrating their golden wedding anniversary. Musical staples included the Gloria from Missa de Angelis and Holy is the Lord for the Sanctus. To judge from the service sheet we were also supposed to sing the Easter chant alleluia to acclaim the Gospel, but the reader evidently wasn’t in the loop, so we recited it instead. We began with Adeste fideles and ended with Hark the herald, and in between were Sebastian Temple’s Make me a channel of your peace and Carey Landry’s The love I have for you. A soloist sang Harold Darke’s In the bleak midwinter and the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria.

For the last few years we’ve had just the men of the choir on Christmas morning, and it’s always a fun sing. With very little preparation it’s possible to make a fine sound in four-part close harmony, and questions of balance recede when there are only male voices: there were just eight of us this year, but we raised the roof.

Our celebration was structured along the lines of para. 110 of the Directory on Popular Piety, with a vigil forming an extended Liturgy of the Word, as at Easter, but with the principal celebrant joining us after the first three readings. (Fr Tony presided up to this point.) Celebration Brass were with us, and a very full congregation joined in heartily with familiar music.

Thomas Niel’s setting of the Gloria takes the traditional Christmas carol refrain and adds choral sections in between setting the Latin text of the prayer. There seem to be a few settings like this to choose from.

Verbum caro factum is a canon written to go with the well-known Taizé setting of the song of the angels. We began with mine and gradually morphed - via an 8-part canon combining the two settings - into a unison proclamation of the words Gloria in excelsis Deo. It was probably too complicated to expect the assembly to join in, but hopefully the lilting 6/8 meant it was a suitably serene accompaniment to the Communion procession.

Of all the Sundays of the year this is perhaps the one when it’s most appropriate to sing a setting of Ave Maria. I might have gone for a congregational setting if I knew of a good one, but I don’t think I do. (Suggestions anyone?) As it was, the arrangement for four voices by Richard Proulx of the famous Bach/Gounod version went down a treat. (After Mass we had misty eyed requests for a swift repeat.)

We usually sing O Come O Come Emmanuel for our recessional hymn on the fourth Sunday of Advent. There’s a sense of magnetic pull towards the celebration of Christmas itself which the hymn seems to conjure. We’ll begin our Vigil celebration half an hour before midnight on Christmas Eve with the same words, first in the Latin chant of the antiphon O Emmanuel, and then with the hymn once again. To my mind, there’s no more effective way of marking our presence at the threshold of the feast.

For our Communion processional song we mixed John Bell’s Veni Immanuel with verses from Psalm 32 (33). This psalm seems just right for Advent, with the lines The Lord looks on those who revere him, on those who hope in his love and Our soul is waiting for the Lord.

We sang an abridged version of Purcell’s famous Bell Anthem – so-called because of the repeated runs down the scale, like a peal of bells, in the open instrumental prelude – omitting the second verse section (beginning Be careful for nothing) but retaining all the repetitions of Rejoice in the Lord alway. The net result was more rejoicing and less admonition than St Paul probably intended. But for Gaudete Sunday I felt it was on target.

Sunday, 6 December 2009

For our annual Christmas concert in aid of Age Concern we were joined as usual by tenor and local radio presenter Jon Christos, and by ace chamber choir Notability. Soprano Jenny Williams joined us too, for a most welcome second appearance. The aim in drawing up the programme was to have something for everyone, and I'd like to think we succeeded. As well as the musical fare, we had readings and reminiscences from local celebrities and dignitaries. Bishop Brain led us in prayer at the end.

For a celebration in early Advent it was unashamedly Christmas-themed. This was the eighth year in succession we’ve hosted the event, and the first couple of times we did it, I tried to give it an overall Advent feel. But somehow it doesn’t feel right to round off a celebration like this with a rousing chorus of Come, thou long expected Jesus, and people seem to like it better this way.

My feeling is that if we were more fastidious about the timing of Christmas musical celebrations, we could miss out on communicating the Christmas message itself to people it might otherwise not reach. In a week or so’s time we’re hitting the pubs of Salford, this time in aid of St Ann’s Hospice, Little Hulton, but with the same ulterior motive in mind.

Cathedral Choir & Notability

The Truth from Above (Vaughan Williams)

All

O Come all ye Faithful

Notability

Wassail Song (trad., arr Vaughan Williams)The night he was born (Bob Chilcott)

I’ve been looking for ages for a strong and singable musical interpretation of the text Prepare a way for the Lord, and Peter Jones’s Song of Consolation (from Decani’s Veni Emmanuel) is a very pleasing find. The refrain has the words

Prepare the way for the coming of GodAcross the desert drive a long straight highwayFill in the valleys, make the mountain tops lowAnd all shall see the glory of the coming of God

John Ireland’s simple setting of Adam lay ybounden must be less well-known than Boris Ord’s Carols-for-Choirs version, but it has nice little touches of word-painting. I especially like the throwaway feel of the words and all was for an apple with a couple of beats’ rest immediately following, like a shrug of the shoulders: it didn’t take much to bring about the fall of mankind; any trivial object of desire would have done the trick.

Today’s Gospel Acclamation, from Psalm 84(85), is also found in the second form of the Penitential Rite: the former has Let us see, O Lord, your mercy, and give us your saving help; for the latter we sang, in dialogue between the celebrant and people: Lord, show us your mercy and love, and grant us your salvation.

For the Gospel Acclamation itself we sang Alan Smith’s energetic and spiky setting from the collection Baptised with Fire, very obligingly rewritten (in a small way) to make it, in my reckoning, more accessible for the singing assembly. (The rewrite involved ironing out a couple of the semiquavers in the refrain.) The remaining three Sundays of Advent will tell whether our assembly takes it to heart. I hope so: it’s a good one, and another useful addition to that slender body of work, liturgical music which both challenges the choir and properly involves the assembly.

The musical setting for the new translation of the Sanctus proposed by ICEL is an adaptation of Mass XVIII from the Kyriale. By way of laying the groundwork for introducing the new text in its proper musical garb when the time comes, we’re singing a version with the existing text during Advent. It’s slightly different from the current version in the English Missal, adapted to preserve more of the melodic contour of the Latin original, the way the proposed setting of the new ICEL text does. Hopefully it will soon become second nature for our assembly.

Christ’s kingship, today’s readings tell us, is characterised not by grandeur but by truth:

It is he who is coming on the clouds; everyone will see him, even those who pierced him, and all the races of the earth will mourn over him. This is the truth. Amen.

and in our Lord’s own words:

I was born for this, I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice.

We sang Vaughan Williams’s haunting arrangement of the traditional This is the truth sent from above. The key to it was not to let the voice of the narrator (in this case the choir) intrude on the narrative itself, with its simple yet profound encapsulation of the whole history of salvation. We sang it unaccompanied, and began and ended with unison verses. The effect was arresting, at the end especially, I thought.

As well as our opening and closing hymns celebrating our Lord’s kingship, our hymn at the preparation of the gifts prayed for Christ’s kingdom to come on earth:

Lord for ourselves; in living power remake us – self on the cross, and Christ upon the throne, past put behind us, for the future take us: Lord of our lives, to live for Christ alone.

Te saeculorum principem is the office hymn for second vespers of today’s feast. We sang it in alternation with the words from St Luke’s Gospel, addressed to the crucified King: Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.

Daniel Bath and I led the music for the 9 am Mass in Forest Bank Prison today. Daniel and I share the direction of the prisoners’ choir, which meets one morning a week. Although the choir wasn’t performing this morning, several of its members were in the congregation, and between us we sang well. The principal celebrant was Bishop Brain of Salford, who represents the Bishops of England and Wales on the subject of prisons.

Faced with an absence of shared repertoire when it came to settings of the Eucharistic Acclamations, we devised one in last week’s choir practice, setting the words from the Missal to the tune (New Britain) of Amazing Grace. It’s a tune everyone knows, and, minus the anacruses, it’s a decent fit for the Missal text. This seemed to us a better idea than dredging up one of the old dismal paraphrased settings, and the two-minute run-through before Mass was enough to allow the willing congregation to pick it up.

Today’s Gospel reading—they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory—foreshadows the early weeks of Advent, with their emphasis on the expectation of our Lord’s return. (Next week, for the feast of Christ the King, it’s the same, with two further mentions of our Lord coming on the clouds.)

There was a tough planning decision to make – whether to hold one or more musical items in reserve for future weeks, or to (so to speak) play the trump cards straight away, in opting for the clearest musical choices to chime with today’s readings.

I chose the latter course, reckoning that both Christ the King and the Sundays of Advent offer a sufficiently wide range of other musical selections to mean that we could safely use up our repertoire of “second coming” hymns today. Hence, Lo, he comes, Let all mortal flesh keep silence and O Jesus Christ, remember.

That of course leaves open the question whether it would be good to repeat one or more of these items in a week or two. I usually avoid that unless there’s a particular connection to be emphasised between different days in the calendar. Not sure that’s what we’re looking at here – rather, just several Sundays touching on the same theme. What would you do?

Today’s Communion antiphon –

I tell you solemnly, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours

linked neatly with that same theme of our Lord’s coming, in the text of the Lord’s prayer: allowing us to say both thy kingdom come and give us this day our daily bread. Stravinsky’s idiosyncratic take on Russian Orthodox chant (originally written in 1926 to the Slavonic text of the prayer, but revised to accommodate the Latin text in 1949) is austere, but charged with pent-up energy. I suggested to the choir imagining a nuclear reactor surrounded by a lead casing; or, an organ-playing member of the choir countered, like playing with the stops out but the swell box shut.

The common thread running through Sunday’s readings was The Lord upholds the widow and orphan (from Psalm 145(146)). We had John Foley’s The Cry of the Poor, and a first outing in a couple of years for Panis Angelicus:

The bread of angels becomes bread for humankind;The heavenly bread puts an end to prefigurations.What a wonderful thing!The poor and humble servant partakes of the Lord.

(Thomas Aquinas, 1227–1274)

Our opening hymn made the same connection, tenuously - to all, life thou givest, to both great and small.

For Remembrance Sunday we had Abide with Me, sung gently and solemnly, but rising to a vaguely Elgarian climax for the last verse with descant. I think we hit the spot.

As well as in our recessional hymn, we had saints in the entrance hymn (Angels and saints with us, their grateful voices blending); in Brahms’s How lovely are thy dwellings, with its text from Psalm 84:

O blest are they that in thy house are dwelling:they ever praise thee, O Lord, for evermore.

and in Viadana’s Exsultate Justi, which sets the opening verses of Psalm 33 from today’s Introit:

Rejoice, you just, in the Lord;praise from the upright is fitting.

Come to Me combines the text of the Gospel Acclamation with a paraphrase of the Beatitudes from today’s Gospel and Communion Antiphon. With a repeated refrain and verses for the choir, we find it works well as a Communion processional song. The sheet music is available as a free download.

Today’s Gospel reading about the healing of the blind beggar Bartimaeus prompted five of our musical choices: Your hands, O Lord and Praise my soul both speak of healing, and Be thou my vision links the story to our wider dependence on God’s loving protection. Marty Haugen’s Now in this banquet makes this link too, addressing God in one of the verses as light for the blind.

The choir also sang Cum appropinquaret Iesus by Ginés Pérez, a founder of the Valencian school of composition in the late sixteenth century, in an edition prepared by Esperanza Rodriguez, a former choral scholar here at Salford. The text of the piece is a précis of today’s Gospel reading, but, puzzlingly, begins with our Lord approaching (appropinquaret) Jericho rather than leaving it. Explanation, anyone?

From Thursday to Saturday the Cathedral was host to the annual Conference of Cathedral Deans in England and Wales, joined on Friday and Saturday by a meeting of the Conference of Catholic Directors of Music, the body bringing together the cathedral music directors in England and Wales. Mass on Friday evening was concelebrated by all the deans, with the cathedral choir in attendance, and a small but exceptionally talented singing assembly!

We kept to our normal musical fare, providing fellow cathedral musicians whose regular output in some cases might be more traditional and reserved in greater measure to the choir, a flavour of the actuosa participatio which we think of as our hallmark. Perhaps the Nowak Gloria and Bob Hurd’s Missa Ubi Caritas in particular were good advertisements for the song of the assembly, to say nothing of Paul Inwood’s well-known psalm setting.

and Graham Kendrick’s The Servant King made the same connection. Stephen Dean’s Father, if this cup has verses from the same chapter of Isaiah (chapter 53).

We sang Maurice Besly’s setting of the famous prayer often attributed to Cardinal Newman. In rehearsal I asked choir members who had heard of Besly, and who had heard of Newman? The respective answers, of course, were almost no-one and almost everyone. This, indirectly, was the key to performing the piece - understating the simple homophonic chant-like musical setting, in order to let the words of the prayer come to the fore, in their calm, even serene declaration of dependence on God’s loving protection. Sung at Communion, it echoed the same dependence found in the Communion antiphon and today’s Responsorial psalm, both taken from Psalm 32(33): May your love be upon us O Lord, as we place all our hope in you.

Today’s Communion antiphon The rich suffer want and go hungry, but nothing shall be lacking to those who fear the Lord mirrors the Gospel reading from Mark concerning rich men, camels and needles. We had Byrd’s O Quam Suavis from Book II of the Gradualia of 1607, which includes the line fastidiosos divites dimittens inanes (“sending the haughty rich away empty”). It’s a revolutionary text, like the Magnificat, but here clothed in the most graceful and irenic disguise.

The first reading (Wis 7:7-11), placing wisdom above riches, was the main scriptural source for Diane Murden’s and my Wisdom Come Softly. It was conceived as a piece for Pentecost, with the last verse based on the prayer Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, but it seemed just as appropriate to sing it today. We used to do it as a choir piece, but we’ve sung it enough times in the last eight years for our our assembly to sing it confidently, and we did it that way today.

There was more wisdom in today’s responsorial psalm, Ps 89(90): Make us know the shortness of our life, that we may gain wisdom of heart. This and other verses from the same psalm are also set in Bernadette Farrell’s Restless is the heart. With the refrain echoing St Augustine (from the Confessions), it’s a good addition to our repertoire of Communion processional songs.

Today’s readings had the theme of marriage, and our opening and closing hymns reflected this. For O Perfect Love we had Sir Richard Terry’s magnificent tune Highwood, which must be the best hymn tune that (almost) no-one ever sings.

Daniel Bath’s superb setting of today’s entrance antiphon, beginning O Lord, you have given everything its place in the world to my mind worked well at the Preparation of the Gifts, where it didn’t need to be well-known and instantly singable, in the way an entrance song might if it is truly to serve the purpose of fostering the unity of those who have been gathered, as GIRM tells us.

Ed Nowak’s Mass of the Creator Spirit is that extraordinarily rare bird, a musical setting that gives the singing assembly its proper role, while offering something genuinely musically challenging and rewarding for an ambitious choir. The Gloria, in particular, fits the bill, and the fiery organ part holds out interesting challenges too. I wish there were more pieces like it.

Martini was Mozart’s teacher, and by all accounts his setting of the Latin text Seek ye first the kingdom of God was proposed by way of a corrective to a more wayward and inspired setting by his teenage pupil. We’ve done Mozart’s version in the past, and we’ll come back to it soon. It’s much the better of the two.

Our Mass today was celebrated in the presence of the relics of St Thérèse of Lisieux. The congregation was bigger than I’ve ever seen for a Sunday Mass at the cathedral, and the music was chosen to suit the occasion.

The opening hymn approximately reflected the entrance antiphon—the hymn’s …opens to you his sacred heart, O to that heart draw nigh. Ye hear how kindly he invites… matching the antiphon’s But now show us your greatness of heart, and treat us with your unbounded kindness, while also acknowledging our distinguished visitor with the words Jesus, thou joy of saints on high, thou hope of sinners here, and the highly apposite all ye that labour come to me, and I will give you rest. We used Colin Mawby’s festive arrangement of the tune St Bernard from his collection Hymns for Occasions. I think it set the right tone for a grand and solemn celebration.

For the Communion procession we had a new piece – a simple setting for assembly of some words from Thérèse’s Mon chant d’aujourd’hui:

Another of those Sundays that are difficult to plan for because there seem to be fewer items in our repertoire that directly connect with the readings and propers. But Be thou my vision and All that is hidden linked nicely to the theme of discipleship set out in today’s Gospel reading from Mark:

If anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all and servant of all.

Jacques Berthier’s Kyrie I formed the backbone of our Penitential Rite in the third form, with Fr Tony singing the tropes (with the choir accompanying) in between the people’s refrains.

After our recessional hymn Anthony treated us to Bach’s St Anne Fugue in E♭, BWV 552. The striking resemblance of the fugue’s subject to the opening line of the familiar tune for O God, our help in ages past is said to be fortuitous, but the two pieces go together splendidly.

At Communion we had Attwood’s Teach me, O Lord, the way of thy statutes, reflecting today’s Communion antiphon:

You have laid down your precepts to be faithfully kept. May my footsteps be firm in keeping your commands.

Attwood is claimed to have been a “favourite pupil of Mozart”, but judging from the workmanlike simplicity of Teach me, I’m not sure a whole lot actually rubbed off.

In today’s Gospel reading from Mark, Jesus – seen the previous two Sundays as teacher and healer – reveals his impending suffering and death. The first reading and the responsorial psalm reflect the starkness of this disclosure. To get the choir in the right frame of mind for rehearsing O Jesu Christ, mein Lebens Licht (in John Rutter’s excellent translation) I pointed to the phrase “I have set my face like flint” in the first reading from Isaiah, to encapsulate the sense of grave steadfastness in Bach’s solemn motet.

Our opening and closing hymn choices too had a Passiontide feel, though Let all mortal flesh at the preparation of the gifts was intended as a more numinous reflection on Christ’s kingship, acknowledged (obliquely) by Peter in the Gospel reading.

A first outing in three years for Bernadette Farrell’s Eucharistic Acclamations (also published as the Mass of Hope). They have the merit of versatility, working well, in my experience, with parish music group resources, as much as in the solemn and stirring arrangement by Paul Inwood for choir and organ, which is how we did them today.

We returned from our Summer break today, and were fortunate to have members of Province 1 of the Catenian Association with us once again. As usual for these occasions, the music was chosen to take advantage of the large and enthusiastic singing assembly.

Today’s readings touched on healing, and two of our hymns took up the same theme: Praise my soul, the king of heaven (“ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven”) and Thou whose almighty Word (“Thou who didst come to bring/on thy redeeming wing/healing and sight,health to the sick in mind, sight to the inly blind, ah! now to all mankind,let there be light!”)

Psalm 42’s thirsty deer had two contrasting outings, in my simple setting and Palestrina’s famous gem. (One-nil to Palestrina then.)

The Ordinary of the Mass was mix-and-match, the items by Joncas and Schiavone providing instantly accessible but musically strong congregational responses for a gathering of people from disparate worshipping communities with a limited common repertoire. And if anyone didn’t know the Sanctus from the Mass of Creation, perhaps they should have, and they do now.

All that plus Bach’s Jig Fugue during the Preparation of the Gifts, carried off by our inimitable organist with verve and panache, and stuff like that.

Not bad for a Sunday with no organist, no choir and no music director. Credit goes to the Dean, Fr Tony, for choosing a sung Gospel Acclamation and sung Eucharistic Acclamations, and for starting everything off barring the Gospel Acclamation, which fell to the reader of the second reading, who just happened to be stood at the ambo at the right time.

Only the last hymn was a little less well-known (I'm told by a Soprano Who Was There), but members of the choir were scattered among the congregation – this is their regular place of worship, after all – and they helped to carry it along.

It doesn't take great musical resources to have an effective sung liturgy; just an understanding of what's important and a willingness to go for it.

The Taizé chant There is One Lord, with its cantor’s verses, chimes exactly with today’s second reading, which was also the basis for Fr Frank’s homily. So it felt like a good choice. We usually sing Taizé pieces during communion, since the short memorable refrains are good processional material. It was good to sing one today that didn't have to be gentle and contemplative! Though I suppose it’s a failure of my imagination to think that all communion songs need to be quiet thoughtful ones.

Our opening hymn, with its text by Sylvia Dunstan, was another good new discovery from Laudate, and just right for today’s Gospel story of the feeding of the five thousand.

Today was the choir’s last Sunday until September – we take a welcome break during the month of August. Musical selections for the next few Sundays are in the hands of The Management, who may keep us posted here if he gets his computer fixed!

It's not long at all since we last had a Sunday with a strong “shepherd” theme, but we found a whole different set of musical expressions for it. As well as the Bach and He like a shepherd true in verse two of Praise we our God with joy, we had The living God my shepherd is, with words by one J. Driscoll SJ (of the British Jesuit province, d. 1940, it says somewhere – anyone know any more?), and sung to the tune of Brother James's Air by James Leith MacBeth Bain (1840-1925). These are better words for this tune than the more familiar The Lord’s my shepherd, since there's no need to repeat the third and fourth lines of each verse. Another pleasing new discovery in the pages of Laudate.

Dona nobis pacem from Taizé has a verse for cantor setting some of the text from Sunday’s second reading from Ephesians:

Christ is our peace, making us one.In his own person, he destroyed hostility,He came and preached the good news of peace.

A difficult week to plan for, I found, perhaps because I couldn't find a lot in our repertoire to match the texts of Sunday’s readings and propers. We settled on two items reflecting the sending out of the twelve in the day’s Gospel reading. One was our recessional hymn, Forth in thy name, the other Bernadette Farrell’s God has chosen me, minus the bongo solo, alas (we did it one year, when one of our choral scholars was a percussionist), but with the three-part a cappella close harmony for the women’s voices in the verses. Everyone sang the refrains.

Alan Smith’s psalm setting was from Psalm Songs, and for the Gospel Acclamation we had the mode 2 chant setting that comes up many times in the year (including the feast of Ss Peter and Paul), and features in Decani Music’s Cantate.

Elgar’s O Salutaris Hostia – his third setting of the same text – dates from his early years, when he was still involved with Catholic liturgical music. He probably wrote it when he was twenty-three, but there are plenty of touches that hint at the future composer of the Enigma Variations or Gerontius, at least for a choir willing to ham it up. Like we did.

For our celebration of the feast of Saints Peter and Paul today we were joined by members of Province 1 of the Catenian Association. We had music to suit a large and willing singing assembly – the Gathering Mass, the Coventry Gloria, and some rousing and well-known hymns. It's some years since we’ve sung Paul Inwood’s mass regularly on Sundays, but it’s just right for large ad hoc gatherings when you want to be sure people will know it well enough to be able to play their part.

The choir sang the setting of Tu Es Petrus by Clemens non Papa (according to Wikipedia his nickname - not the pope - was a joke on the part of his publisher), and the Agnus Dei from Victoria’s Missa O Quam Gloriosum, sandwiched between the first and third lines of the Agnus from Mass XVIII. This seems to me a good way to include gems from the repertoire of polyphonic mass settings, while maintaining the participation of the assembly first and foremost.

A prayer for those in peril on the sea, to go with the storms depicted in the verses of Sunday’s responsorial psalm. They’re unusually dramatic for psalm verses, and we acted them out with big dynamic contrasts, and a sudden pause for the calm after the storm to descend in the third verse.

Two versions of the communion antiphon The Eyes of All – a new simple setting of mine with a congregational refrain, and Charles Wood’s serene prayer of thanksgiving.

More serene thanksgiving in the Mozart (the soprano solo beautifully rendered by Gwen Leech), echoing today’s psalm response O give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures for ever. And then, to finish, a more exuberant expression of gratitude in Stephen Dean’s hymn setting, which deserves to be more widely known.

Another of our rich and varied musical banquets for the solemnity of the Body & Blood of the Lord, transferred from last Thursday - ranging from Daniel Bath’s Gloria in Cuban jazz style to Messiaen’s vision of the heavenly banquet, at turns almost mute with reverence and dazzling in its vision of future glory.

For the responsorial psalm we took the response from Psallite (Raise the cup of salvation, only we added “I will” by way of an anacrusis, to bring the words more in to line with those of the Lectionary) and psalm verses set by Stephen Dean. The two seemed to go together well.

Compared with the brimming sensuality of the Messiaen, we had to work hard to bring Byrd’s Sacerdotes Domini to life. But I think we found the right understated note of solemnity and mystery for the first half – “The priests of the Lord offer incense and loaves to God, and therefore they shall be holy to their God, and shall not defile His name” – while injecting a spring in the step for the cheerful alleluias with which it concludes.

We didn’t sing today’s sequence Lauda Sion Salvatorem. It’s optional, and to my mind the Latin chant setting isn’t a thing of great beauty. It’s long too. Maybe next year; or maybe I’ll look for a more appealing vernacular setting. Suggestions anyone?

A sung Credo for a feast on which we reflect perhaps more than usual on the mysteries of what we believe. We sang it antiphonally, the choir and people alternating lines, but having tried it that way I think I prefer singing it all straight through tutti. The text isn’t a dialogue, and it feels arbitrary to allocate some propositions but not others to the singing assembly. It doesn’t make it any easier to sing, anyway - with Credo III you either know it or you don’t. It would be good to sing it often enough that it’s familiar even to younger members of the congregation.

For Communion, a combination of John Bell’s God beyond all names from the Iona collection We walk his way, and the chant antiphon Benedicta sit sancta Trinitas. Strictly speaking the latter is the Introit for today's Mass, but it lends itself nicely to breaking up into three shorter sections interleaved with John Bell’s refrain. In previous years we’ve sung Bernadette Farrell’s song with the same title. Another good text for a day when we reflect on mysteries!

For a special occasion, our usual rich and varied musical banquet. Victoria’s Veni Creator alternates polyphonic verses with verses from the familiar chant setting. We had chant for the Sequence too, though in previous years we’ve also sung the arrangement by Richard Proulx, which clothes the chant melody in a jaunty 6/8 with parallel fifths between the voices.

Come, Holy Spirit, which we sang during the Rite of Confirmation, is a haunting short piece by the Taiwanese ethnomusicologist Loh I-to, consisting of simple ostinato lines for three voices in what in Western music would be called the phrygian mode. The voices enter one by one and the piece’s sense of brooding mystery rises and then ebbs away, conjuring a vivid sense of the Spirit hovering over the chaos. The piece comes from the GIA collection Sound the Bamboo, a compilation of hymns and other sacred music from Asia, of which Loh was also the general editor.

For the Communion procession we alternated repetitions of Spirit of the Living God with verses from psalm 103. The same psalm verses appear in Paul Wellicome’s Send forth your Spirit. This is an unusually lusty sing for a responsorial psalm setting! But no less effective for all that. The rafters shook.

For the Communion procession we’re singing Jacques Berthier’s My Peace interspersed with chant verses from the short responsory for the office of Terce: Ascendit Deus in Jubilatione. This means that on Sunday we’re singing the same text in three different guises: as well as this Latin version, we’re singing Shaun MacCarthy’s exhilarating setting of the Responsorial Psalm, which sets the Grail text God goes up with shouts of joy to verses that flash past in a flurry of alternating 7/8, 8/8 and 3/4, and William Croft’s God is gone up with a merry noise.

Croft succeeded his teacher John Blow as organist of Westminster Abbey in 1708 (it says in Wikipedia). His verse anthem is in a different style from our usual choral fare, with two majestic choruses flanking a perkier verse for six-part semichorus. In recent years we've sung Palestrina’s Ascendo ad Patrem. The Croft piece makes for a sparkling alternative to Palestrina's more sedate and stately vision of our Lord ascending.

A sung Marian antiphon in place of reciting the Hail Mary after the prayer of the faithful. It's May, after all.

Four different pieces reflecting on the theme of God's love, to go with the multiple references in today's scripture readings. Both the Archer and Dean pieces offer a simple, thoughtful and singable refrain for the assembly, and verses for cantor or choir. Tallis's If ye love me sets the text of today's Communion antiphon, and the final hymn links the same ideas of divine love and God's Spirit.

My own Speak Out is an attempt to set today's entrance antiphon (plus the psalm verses from the Gradual) to a boisterous tune that takes up the idea of a voice of joy. It's mostly in 4/4, but there's some skipping around in alternating 5/4 and 3/4 as well, and we were treated to some fiery improvisation along the same lines from Anthony at the end of the song, while Fr Tony incensed the altar and the children processed out for their own Liturgy of the Word.

The refrain from John Bell's I am the Vine is based on the same text as this Sunday's Communion antiphon (John 15:5). Psalm 80 also talks of a vine:

God of hosts, turn again, we implore, look down from heaven and seeVisit this vine and protect it, the vine your right hand has planted

and the two go together well. The idea of marrying the Communion antiphon with this psalm text comes from Psallite, as far as I can tell, but for the music for the psalm verses I've chosen a chant setting by Laurence Bévenot.

More Easter jubilation in the choral items this week: the Couperin is a model of 18th century elegance, while the anonymous This is the Day is almost fanfare-like in its repeated resounding declarations that we will rejoice.

After speaking with Makin organs today, James Harker the principal organ voicer has kindly agreed to come to the cathedral next week and look at re-voicing some of the stops. The organ's voicing has not been altered since it was installed in 2002, and it seems it's time to have a look at revamping some of the specification. The areas I think most in need of this attention are the solo reed stops (in particular the pontifical trumpet, which could do with sounding more..well pontifical!!) The tuba itself is very fat and could do with maybe being a bit less hearty. Other voices come to mind as well. The great Clarabella is very woolly, and doesn't really add anything to the blend. As there is also a stopped flute, having another 8' flute stop as well seems a little redundant. The swell oboe could do with being quietened, and the swell cornopean could be souped up a little. The mutations on the choir also should be a little more subtle, as their use does tend to throw the choir off key quite easily. Finally the pedal reeds could be brought out a bit more. As any organist knows, these are the jewel in the crown of any good instrument!

On another note, we shall soon have a proper cover for the organ to protect it against the elements. As many of you know, the organ was damaged not long ago by rain water which seeped into the console from the roof, and caused no end of problems, which were finally resolved with an insurance claim! Let's hope the cover will prove to be an effective barrier against any deluge that might be brought down upon it from the heavens!!

Plenty of sheep-related material for Good Shepherd Sunday, including rousing hymns at the beginning and the end (We are his folk, he doth us feed, and for his sheep he doth us take on the one hand, Shepherd-King o'er mountain steep, homeward bring the wandering sheep on the other). There was also John Rutter's The Lord is my Shepherd, and Surrexit Pastor Bonus by Haller, with its text from today's Communion antiphon.

Haller was a leading German member of the Cecilian movement, which aimed in the late nineteenth century to restore church music to its supposedly pristine repertoire of plainchant and Renaissance polyphony. The compositions which resulted were mainly backward looking, and are now largely forgotten, but Haller's piece is a charming combination of Renaissance counterpoint and Romantic expression. The mischievous might point out a certain similarity with the nuns' chorus (Morning Hymn and Alleluia) at the beginning of The Sound of Music, but I certainly wouldn't. And besides, the latter is set in an Austrian abbey in 1938, so what else would they have been singing except the music of the Cecilians?

Bernadette Farrell's Gospel acclamation has a refrain with simple singable dignity, but the verses to my mind don't have the staying power to serve well for all the Sundays in Easter time. So we're singing the lectionary verses to a four-part chanted tone, sandwiched by the refrain. Seems to work.

Our Eastertide musical fare sets a lighter tone than the things we sang during Lent and Holy Week. Liam Lawton's Mass of the Celtic Saints probably isn't typical 'Cathedral' music, but it's an assembly-friendly setting that deserves to be more widely known. What's more, the brightness of the 6/8 in D major in both the Gloria and the Sanctus gives them a spring-time feel that fits well with the Easter season.

There's a broader aim too, in our commitment to the inclusivity of our musical programme. It's only a few weeks since we were singing Mass XVIII and Missa Orbis Factor every Sunday. Having plainchant as part of our eclectic mix, means, I hope, that members of our community don't see the chant as something aesthetically rarefied and unreconstructedly backward-looking. Rather, the chant is part of our everyday language of musical prayer. That's chant 'for the rest of us', I like to think.

A Song of the Light by Simon Lole (formerly Master of Music at Salisbury Cathedral) sets an elegant translation of the evening prayer Phos Hilaron (Hail, Gladdening Light). With the original text's reference to the stars craftily changed (by us) to a reference to the rising sun, it makes for a beautiful piece for a Sunday morning in Easter time! It chimed well with today's Psalm response: 'Lift up the light of your face on us, O Lord'. Simon Lole's text begins: Light of the world, in grace and beauty; mirror of God's eternal face; transparent flame of love's free duty: you bring salvation to our race.

The annual Mass of Chrism has several purposes: the blessing of the oils, the renewal of priestly commitment and a kind of grand gathering of all the diocesan family. We make a festive occasion of it, with the choir at full strength, our splendid six piece brass ensemble Celebration Brass adding to Anthony's masterful demonstration of what our Makin organ can do, and music chosen to bring the best out of the enormous congregation.

This year we began with Michael Perry's hymn text Bring to the Lord a glad new song, a stirring re-working of Psalms 149 and 150 to the tune of Parry’s Jerusalem. As the sounds died away (not that there's any reverberation to speak of with the Cathedral so full), Bishop Terence said he could hear the quilismas bouncing off the roof.

O Redeemer is the traditional hymn for the procession of the oils on Maundy Thursday. My setting uses the very fine translation by Paul Ford (one of the Psallite composers) from his collection By flowing waters. The people's refrain has the same harmonies, more or less, as Pachelbel's Canon, and the brass arrangement explores the similarity.

One of our tasks in making music at the cathedral is to serve as a role model for parishes. Over the years I've tried to find settings of the Eucharistic Acclamations for this occasion that people might (metaphorically) take away and use in their own parishes. This year we sang Richard Proulx's Community Mass, which to my mind deserves to be commended, especially to parishes still using substandard settings from thirty-odd years ago that don't respect the liturgical text.

All that and (on the one hand) Purcell, Lassus and Charles Wood, (and on the other) Chris Walker, John Bell and Martin Foster too. And plainchant. And Soul of my Savour! For me, getting the mix right is part of getting it right in general.

The Easter Vigil is a musical banquet, and I'd like to think we had something for every taste, from Victoria and Lassus to Paul Inwood and Bob Hurd. Christus Resurgens is a juggernaut of a piece, at least it was the way we did it: brimming with Easter joy, with the organ doubling the voices. The text is that of the New Testament reading from Romans 6: Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.

Marty Haugen's Springs of Water, in tandem with Victoria's Vidi Aquam, seem to cover all the bases. We left out the verse mentioning bogs (in the Haugen; I don't think Victoria has any).

Bob Hurd's With joy you shall draw water sets the refrain from Isaiah 12, but has another text for the verses. So we used Bob's refrain, but had the cantor chant the text from Isaiah in between, using a melodic line that echoes the refrain. It worked well.

This is the wood of the cross (Missal tone)Jesus, remember me (Taizé)Miserere Mei (Allegri)

Communion

Ave Verum Corpus (Byrd)Soul of my Saviour

By our standards a fairly "choral" liturgy. The Miserere isn't strictly a canonical text for the Veneration of the Cross, but other psalm texts are, and psalm 50(51) is certainly appropriate for Good Friday. In years when we don't sing the Allegri we sing a setting of the Reproaches.

Ave Verum and Soul of my Saviour both link the blessed sacrament and the passion in a way that's perfect for the Good Friday liturgy: Christ's body, broken for us then and now.

The simplest things can be the most moving. Last year, for all the choral riches, the most appreciative feedback from members of the congregation was for Jacques Berthier's Jesus, remember me. You never can tell what's going to kindle prayer.

To my mind the Mass of the Lord's Supper on the evening of Maundy Thursday has a subdued and thoughtful feel to it. Partly this is because in Salford we have the Mass of Chrism on the morning of the same day, and that's always a joyful and colourful occasion. The evening celebration inevitably has a more contemplative mood by comparison. In Bishop Kelly's time (until 1996) it also had a "family" feel to it - he liked to point up the similarities with the Passover Seder, and had children come up to ask the ritual questions as to why we had gathered, and so on. The music was tailored to match, and to some extent you can still see the traces. A New Commandment, for instance, is a very down-to-earth setting of the Gospel Acclamation, though just right as far as the text is concerned. Chris Walker's psalm setting, Bob Hurd's Ubi Caritas and my own and Diane Murden's If there is this love (just published by GIA :-)) all add a similar gentle and accessible feel.

The chant items, on the other hand, connect us with tradition, as is fitting for such an important celebration. We've used the Sanctus from Missa Orbis Factor during Lent for the past three or four years. It's a beautiful setting - to my ear far more elegant and moving than the more familiar chant setting of the Missa de Angelis, for instance. And Pange Lingua more or less chooses itself as the piece of music for the procession to the altar of repose.

The Victoria setting of Hosanna Filio David works well at the beginning of the Palm Sunday liturgy. Experience shows that it's a difficult moment to get the assembly to sing, and I'm not sure I really know of any congregation-friendly settings of this text that are up to much musically. The Victoria is quite a bouncy piece, so it makes for a fairly arresting beginning, and is just right for singing out of doors! I preceded it with the chant setting of the same text this year to make something more substantial out of it. Holy Week always seems to me a good time to include connections to our chant heritage, since there are so many memorable pieces that come up at this time.

Alan Smith's psalm setting is one I like a lot - we rarely sing unaccompanied settings of the Responsorial Psalm, but on Palm Sunday and Good Friday, with the Passion narrative coming up, it seems like the right thing to do. Alan's psalm is in one of the volumes of Music for the Mass, but we use the choral arrangement of the verses, which I picked up a few years ago at a meeting of the SSG Composers' Group.

Martin Foster's setting of the Lenten Gospel Acclamation text Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ appears in Laudate, and has verses for every Sunday in Lent. I think I wrote to him to ask for verses for Palm Sunday and the Mass of Chrism, and he very kindly obliged. We've found that the refrain works very effectively as a response, post-Gospel, to the priest or deacon's This is the Gospel of the Lord as well.

Stephen Dean's Father, if this cup is a very pleasing new discovery this year from Laudate. In recent years we've sung David Haas's Now we remain, but I was glad to find a song that uses the text of the Communion Antiphon in the assembly's sung refrain. There are dramatic verses (sung in unison) for choir or cantor too.

Welcome! This blog will keep a record of musical activities at St John's Cathedral, Salford - what we've been doing and what's coming up, and some thoughts on the musical planning process. Hopefully in time there will be some ideas and resources that might be of help to parish musicians too. Things will grow slowly, so keep coming back to check. For now, if you look in, leave a note to say you've found this blog. It will encourage us to keep adding to the content!

Welcome

This is a record of musical activities at St John's Cathedral, Salford - what we've been doing and what's coming up, and some thoughts on the musical planning process. You can also find information about joining the choir, and about our choral scholarships program.